Walks in the Rose Garden

Hello and how are you my dears? Phew, the month of March is getting over soon! Where the days are being swallowed? The week starts and it's already mid of it... Not enough hours in a day and not enough days in a week.. Can we invent just one more and call it suppose Extraday? Eh? No I guess this is just imagination...
On a serious note... These days I always think of what is really important in life and what we shall let go... Seeing horrible and scary things happening
around the world, which show that life of someone (including animals) means nothing, what are we left with? Can we make a change?
I am dreading the moment my D turns on the TV... news... nothing positive at all there, he says too... the world will have to come to an end some day... We fear for our little son because things are not looking so good in terms of child safety in India, but then where is safe? No guarantee anywhere. If I was not a parent now it would have been easier to simply live life, but when you have a child all you think of is how to keep him happy and healthy. At the same time one shall be happy too in order to provide a good environment at home, where everyone feels secure and cozy.
Hence I would really prefer concentrating (as mush as selfish it sounds) on my family. Thinking about what happens tomorrow is useless, having fear of all the bad and negative is similarly pointless... That's why I have (and make) one choice which is family.
As I had written before we always visit gardens on weekends. Lately we have been liking the Rose Garden a lot. It has a vast area, beautiful roses to admire, and fountains. The latest is little A's favourite - he loves water in any form and calls it "mam, mam" in Hindi (meaning "water" as here it is called for little kids). Here is the last to last weekend walk, when the weather was slightly cloudy.

I love this kind of color - cream, creamy pink and orange... Next time we visit Rose Garden, I will take more photos of these beautiful flowers.

And the last weekends' walk... Little A likes this garden too, and I think that the pleasant noise of the fountains and overall green surroundings calm him down. He runs in front of us, exclaiming happily with every step.

The waxing crescent... It was so bright!

By the time we were leaving the garden the twilight set in, and we were able to witness beautifully lit fountains.

Yes, it is a good place to divert one's mind and to just walk  and spend precious time with the family.
I realized that I had not posted some very interesting events and occasions during the period I was away from blogging. Like5 days in  Moscow, and visitng my home town. Do you think it is late to do? Or would you like to see the Russian capital? Let me know so I can plan the posts for you my friends.

Have a nice day, and may life be secure and safe wherever you are!

Time for Handmade

Hello dear friends! You might have thought  I wrote such title for this post because it is time to Handmade! yey! ...Oops, no... I meant HOW to find time to handmade?
I would not like to give excuses WHY I have no time to do this, there are many many moms who have more than one child, and still they do  hobbies, go to work, keep the house etc. Well, I am not one of them.
After I come home from office in the second half of the day, I get occupied with my little A, whether it is to make him sleep or give him food, or play with him, or read to him, or simply hug and kiss him.. it continues till evening when my D comes from his work, and I first of all make chai for him. We sit together in the drawing room, sipping milky chai, little A running from us towards the door and back, and we play with him, have fun etc...
Then just a few more moments, and it is time for little A to sleep again... And it is already time for us to go to bed too, because we have to get up in the morning and start the new day...
As mush as I am enjoying every single moment of motherhood, I feel slightly frustrated because I am not able to figure how to still do things which I had been doing before becoming a mother. How to manage time, or when to find time to crochet, sew, draw? I definitely would like to sleep at night... hehe.
But that's all right, I am immensely happy that little A is the reason for me having less time for other things. Let's see maybe when he grows up and will start doing many deals on his own, the situation will change. So far he started eating with spoon by himself, and helps me to dress him up and groom :)) Last Tuesday we had a lovely time with crayons! He enjoyed putting those lines on paper, selecting colors, holding the crayons in his little hands, broke few of them though.

At one point he selected these colors, good combination I must say. So well, actually I am having time for hobbies, now - with little A :)

It was  a Republic day on 26th, and we had a holiday.We went out to the park with little A. I love taking photos there, the light is awesome, colors appear so bright. Little A enjoys open ground a lot, he runs away from us in such a funny way - bending his upper body slightly forward, his hair long and fluffy fluttering because of movement, little feet moving fast on the grass.. my happiness in jeans he is! :)

I am planning on the next post about how we are raising a bilingual (multilingual?)child :) Stay tuned!

Wishing a peaceful and enjoyable weekend to all of you dear friends!!! 

P.S.Some of you have left my blog but I totally understand why , however will be missing you... best of all to you too!

Last Friday Morning

Every day I get up to a lovely morning, not yet hot, slightly cool. It's been long time I wanted to take some snaps of my morning walk to the bus pick up point. And there are reasons for doing so. I didn't take photos of all possible interesting things, however tried to give you and impression of what the city we live in like. 

First as the path from our house leads me among the houses I can view how people manage their homes. I must say that in India those who have their own houses take really good care of them, and adorn their little front gardens with various beautiful flowers and gorgeous blooming trees and bushes. 

Like this bright orange ones which make a bright fence "cover".

Dahlias are very popular in our city. Mostly they are of a red color.

I couldn't miss this delicate lilly in one of the gardens.

Another dalhia - this kind are huge and have multilayered petals.

A nearly wild  rose bush with little roses of this dark pink color. 

Now as I filled my mind with color I continue strolling along the road, towards the market you can see afar. I will walk till those one storied buildings and to the left. It got really hot here, around +35 in the afternoon, though morning is still bearable. 

On the approach to the bus stop I take time to click a picture of these. (Please educate me again which flower it is). This wild bush can have flowers of different colors - red, pink, yellow, orange!

Here I reach the trees under which I usually wait for my bus and meet my co-workers leaving from the same spot. New translucent leaves appeared just two-three weeks ago, it was unusually "cold" the whole March. 

I am sporting my special maternity salwars - such a comfortable thing!

The bus picks me. I continue my morning riding along the city roads. At some point I realise that I need to include  my baby into this short photo shoot too. Here we are, 26 complete weeks. It looks big from the top, and round - I love it! 

                            

The 44 sector market - still closed, people lazily preparing for the day. All the markets in Chandigarh city look quite the same, so it is a problem sometimes for a new person to remember the way. I still cannot give you directions if you ask me (so ask somebody else :))

The city roads include round abouts which join them into a web around sectors. Sector 35 cross road and a round about.  

The same round about - notice how pretty it looks like! Every such has its own landscape design and plants growing in it. My parents liked these very much when they saw them and took many photos.

Just a glimpse of how the morning traffic can be - all possible vehicles in one place! It is crazy at times! You can see an auto rickshaw -  a small three wheeler, which makes loads of noise with its engine, and is one of the essential types of  transport in Indian cities.

Sector 26 vegetable market "mandi". It is always chaotic and crowded, and noizy, be it morning or evening. From here vegetable sellers purchase their lot, and then sell on the carts in the city.

Oh well, this is an IT park where I work. It is a huge territory with different offices, including mine. No, that one is not my office :) I go back along this road which takes me about 45 minutes.

Just before I get in the bus again and start that routine itinarery - a Jerusalem Thorn tree covered with yellow flowers which give away the sweetest fragrance I've ever felt!

Bye bye for now! See you next time with a bit of crochet in my blog finally. I am also sorry for not replying your comments, I read them all, but this week my office work is so hectic that I am too tired to switch on my home laptop in the evening. I look forward to the coming up weekend and hope the next week gets better. Hugs!

Missing My Hometown

Yes, I am back to India. Can't say this time I was eager to come here, and I can't explain why. This time visit to my parents was different, because my in-laws also went there :) They stayed with us for 2 weeks, and left, and me and my D continued our stay for two more weeks. I didn't want to leave.. I wanted to be there more to enjoy cool weather, have long chats over a cup of tea with my parents, go to dacha, eat MY food, be in MY environment... So right now I am missing my parents badly, and also, to add to this I fell ill just few days before our departure, and still having cough and cold. Oh well, but I am also back to blogging, to you, my friends! I somehow found two opportunities to post during my vacations, but that was all I could afford.

We had great time together in Kazakhstan: visited many places, had awesome weekends, and ate delicious food! Today I'd like to make some kind of presentation of my hometown, as I had never put any photos of it before. 

First I will take you to the new part of the city, which is located on the left bank of the Ishim river. Here comes the symbol of the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, Bayterek. You go to the top by lift, and can view the whole city from the height of 97 meters. It was a new experience for my in-laws, and they liked it. 

 A view of the President house Ak-Orda, with blue dome, and behind it is The Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, called Pyramid.

 A view in the direction of the old town, which is on the right bank of the Ishim river..

Even I discovered many new things in the city this time. We had a great family at the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, which is a huge, 150 m high tent.  

There are many boutiques and shops inside it, as well as a big kids amusement park, and even an artificial beach on the top floor!

You can see how this new part of the city is planned - the objects are situated on the straight line, and symmetrically. 

Happened so that my parents living in such a beautiful city, don't have time to simply walk in it. So in last two weeks we went out with them for a stroll on the river bank and had a wonderful ferryboat ride. Summer brought loads of rains in the North Kazakhstan this year, so such clouds were hanging there every day, but I loved it!

The ferry took us closer to the President House, and the Pyramid, but unfortunately our camera's battery discharged by the time we reached there.

Being among the skyscrapers can make you feel tired, even if you admit how beautiful and impressive they are. My D also said that he likes the old city more, as it is cozy and lively. I agree, and offer you a photo of an old street in the evening.

 And especially I like the never changing view of the sunset, which you can see from our balcony. Cozy, and so MY...

Hope you could make an idea of my hometown. I have more photos to share with you, and more stories to tell. I also plan to start checking out your blogs soon, as I am far far away from what's going on in here. 

So have a nice day and take care, my dears!

Magical forest - see you!

      These days I am less crafty and enjoying more what nature has created... My trip back home is coming towards the end next week... and I still have so much to share! Today - a post about another visit to the forest in the countryside. I don't want to say much but I merely invite you to get to know my country and take a glance at...

     A cherished road to the forests.

A green wheat field and the cloudy sky...

Grazing horses - idyll.

A lovely house on the river bank.

 A settlement in the forests.

 A heart-shaped stone.

And a flower of a wild onion.

Also at a tiny frog.

A bur plant...

and another one...

A field of "carrot grass" - coming closer to the forests...

A dried forest strawberry...

  Magic... remember? Such color combination and such "design", perfect ones, can be created only by nature. Let's learn from it!

A stone berry found by my father! Yummm :)

 Some other stone berries which I found myself...

A mushroom on a birch tree.

 A forest itself... peaceful there, ..no worries...

Someone must be living there.. may be a gnome?

A cobweb with drops of water looked really nice!

 A moss carpet.

These pictures I took when we were in another pine forest. There were berries too.

Cherries from near by plantations.

A dog rose...

A meadow among the trees is shining in the sun.

Some mushroom, I guess, not edible.

But my mum found plenty of these edible milk mushrooms. They grow under a thick layer of fir-needle and you have to dig to get it.

Just a random forest plant. May be you know its name?

Now seeeing forests from far... Don't know when I will be back here again, but hopefully next year and not alone.

See you - my land and sun which shines here also otherwise...

***Have a great week ahead and never forget your home!***